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Friday, November 22, 2013

Silica exposures in fracking : Over 60 percent of workers may be excessively exposed

Silica exposure ironically was were the original workers' compensation exposures brought into the model acts post enactment ( 40 years+) as a vehicle to shelter employers from liability exposures. Today's post is shared from the Pump Handle

These exposures occur in a variety of industries, among them construction, sandblasting, mining, masonry, stone and quarry work, and in the rapidly expanding method of oil and gas extraction known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking.

This exposure can lead to silicosis, an irreversible, and sometimes fatal, lung disease that is only caused by inhaling respirable silica dust. Silica exposure also puts exposed workers at risk of lung cancer, pulmonary tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases.

As big a number as 1.7 million is (about 200,000 more people than currently live in Philadelphia), the “true extent of the problem is probably greater than indicated by available data,” according to NIOSH.

The CDC agency has also written, there “are no surveillance data in the US that permit us to estimate accurately the number of individuals with silicosis.”

It is against this backdrop of ongoing exposures of nearly 2 million silica-exposed workers and the serious health effects, that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has proposed a regulation to address the hazard. One provision of the proposal would update the agency’s...